Former Blazer Chris Dudley will run for Oregon governor, setting up heated Republican primary
Former Portland Trail Blazer and one-time gubernatorial candidate Chris Dudley is officially running for governor.
He announced plans to enter the race Monday morning after months of weighing whether to launch a second bid for Oregon’s highest office.
Dudley, a Republican from Sisters, joins the race just four months before the May primary, where he will compete in a field that includes two prominent state lawmakers and a county commissioner. The winner of the primary is expected to face Democratic Gov. Tina Kotek in the November election.
“Salem’s problems are not going to be solved by someone from Salem,” Dudley told The Oregonian/OregonLive ahead of his announcement. “I think it’s imperative that we get somebody from outside of Salem who’s away from the partisan politics, away from the name calling, the finger pointing, who has the expertise and background and the ability to bring people together to solve these issues.”
No other Republican in recent years has come as close to becoming the governor of Oregon as Dudley did in 2010. That year, he lost in the general election to Democrat John Kitzhaber by just 22,000 votes.
The former NBA center and nonprofit founder told The Oregonian/OregonLive that he’s grown frustrated with Oregon’s lack of progress on pressing issues, particularly its poor education scores, high homelessness rates and ailing economic indicators, most pronounced in the Portland area.
Although some of Dudley’s primary opponents have been raising money for months, he said he’s not concerned about any fundraising disadvantage. He has spent the last few months meeting with Oregonians across the state, gauging interest and soliciting potential donors. State campaign finance records indicate he has not yet reported receiving any contributions.
“I’ve been talking and going around getting a sense of things, talking to business owners, educators, community leaders, for the last couple months,” he said. “I feel incredibly positive. In fact, I was strongly encouraged to jump in by everybody I talked to.”
Originally from Connecticut and raised in San Diego, Dudley played in the NBA for 16 seasons, including six seasons with the Blazers, before retiring from the league in 2003 and staying in the Portland area. During his playing career, he started a foundation to support children with diabetes.
Soon after entering the 2010 gubernatorial race as a political outsider, Dudley emerged as the leading Republican candidate. He outraised his Republican primary competitors and received key endorsements before winning the primary with 40% of the vote. He raised nearly $10.5 million that year, with his largest contributions coming from national political groups, corporations and business executives.
Dudley, 60, has kept a relatively low public profile in the 15 years since that campaign. He co-founded an investment advisory firm and later served as chairman and CEO of Diabetomics, a medical devices company. He and his wife moved to California in 2012 but still owned a home and regularly visited Oregon for years, before moving to Sisters around early 2020.
The retired NBA player reemerged into public view last summer when he joined a coalition of Oregon business leaders urging local officials to make significant investments to help keep the Blazers in Portland. He also spoke at a fall event hosted by the Oregon Republican Party.
No Republican has held Oregon’s top elected office since 1987. Dudley has acknowledged that seeking the governor’s office as a Republican will be an uphill battle, but said he believes many Oregonians are fed up with the status quo and might be interested in a different approach to leadership.
Dudley declined to confirm whether his team has conducted any internal polling, saying he’d rather “just focus on the issues.”
Some of Dudley’s Republican competitors have been raising money for months. Sen. Christine Drazan, a Republican from Oregon City who came in second to Kotek in the 2022 race, announced in October that she would once again run for governor and has raised over $1.36 million since the start of 2025, campaign finance filings show.
Marion County Commissioner Danielle Bethell, who is also seeking the Republican nomination, has raised about $176,000 since January 2025, records show. Rep. Ed Diehl, a Republican from Scio who helped lead the recent referendum effort to halt transportation tax hikes, also jumped into the race last week. He has raised about $46,800 since the beginning of last year.
“I welcome Chris Dudley to the race and look forward to a substantive debate about Oregon’s future and the leadership it needs,” Diehl said in a statement to The Oregonian/OregonLive.
In a written statement, Bethell said she appreciated when Dudley ran for governor in 2010, but said the state’s political landscape has shifted significantly since then.
“When things have been tough, I didn’t move away – I worked hard to become part of the solution,” she said. “From serving on my kids’ school board to winning re-election as commissioner of the fifth largest county of Oregon, I have led every step of the way.”
In her own statement responding to Dudley’s announcement, Drazan avoided mentioning Dudley by name, pointing instead to her own track record.
“I have never stopped working and fighting for the future of my state,” she said. “I look forward to earning the support of Republicans in this primary and to working with our neighbors across the state to defeat Tina Kotek in November.”
A national political group backing Kotek in this year’s race more explicitly criticized Dudley for entering the race. Kotek has raised $2.8 million since the start of 2025 and isn’t expected to face a serious challenger in the Democratic primary.
“Oregon Republicans are already facing a messy, crowded clown car of a primary – and failed candidate Chris Dudley’s entrance into the race will only push every candidate even further to the right and out of step with Oregonians,” Johanna Warshaw, deputy communications director for the Democratic Governors Association, said in a statement.
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